Washington sees solidarity when it turns to Michigan

Team Michigan is engaged in a full-court press to score as much federal help as possible for our automaking state.

After years of ignoring the decline of the U.S. auto industry, Washington appears to be responding to Michigan's pleas for help in replacing lost automaking jobs.

Make the most of it, Michigan, while we still have Washington's ear.

This week, President Barack Obama's auto-recovery czar Ed Montgomery returned to the Great Lakes State, just three weeks after his whirlwind tour of meetings and auto plant visits in Flint and Warren.

His main job is hooking up our communities and workers with existing federal grants and retraining programs, many of them created and funded under the $787 federal stimulus package.

In Ohio last week, he announced a new, $50 million program to retrain workers for new-energy and green-technology jobs.

That's dandy, as far as it goes. Michigan still needs to create the jobs that retrained workers would fill.

With an eye on that goal last week, Michigan's entire congressional delegation - 17 representatives, Democrats and Republicans - sent a letter to the president urging that a lion's share of federal grants for new-battery technology research and manufacturing go to Michigan. Quick-charging, powerful, long-lasting batteries are key to the electric cars of the future, such as the General Motors Corp. Chevrolet Volt.

The letter was a powerful display of solidarity for jobs, in a state often fractured by its partisan politics. Michiganders can - and do - disagree about a lot of issues, but we all must rally round this one cause:

Rebuild Michigan.

The federal government needs to be a full partner in that Herculean task.

And why not?

It's Washington's demands for change in the U.S. auto industry - for a century, Michigan's main industry - that drove Chrysler Corp. into bankruptcy in exchange for billions in federal rescue loans. GM may well be herded toward the same destiny by the end of this month.

Those were unwanted blows to an industry and automaking workforce already hammered for years by cutbacks and layoffs.

The message that state and local officials told Montgomery in Flint this month is that Michigan communities need federal help in every way possible. That includes redevelopment of long-closed factory properties and retaining the auto jobs that still exist.

That help is needed right now.

Bay City Mayor Charles M. Brunner told Montgomery just that last week as he sat at a table with the car czar and about a dozen other people in Washington, D.C.

Brunner's most recent trip to lobby for our town and auto jobs was born of the kind of broad collaboration that is coalescing to save Michigan. The Bay Area Labor Council, United Auto Workers, Bay Area Chamber of Commerce and city of Bay City shared the $900 cost of Brunner's low-budget trip last week.

On Tuesday, Montgomery was back in Michigan, to lead a workshop on how communities can tap into $76 million in stimulus money for energy-efficiency block grants.

So far, the auto recovery czar has kept his focus, and his trips, on Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. He has said it's because we are the part of the nation that is feeling the most pain from lost auto jobs.

Even as he plotted out new mileage and emissions standards for automakers - never a popular topic among car makers - President Obama at least vowed to make them nationwide standards. At least there may not be the hard-to-hit, moving targets of separate state requirements anymore.

Washington, finally, is paying attention to Michigan's needs. We've even got our own "lobbyist" - U.S. Sen. Carl Levin's only half-joking reference to Montgomery during his visit to Flint.

Make the most of it, Michigan. This day was a long time coming, and when it ends, we may never see its likes again anytime soon.